AudioAug 21

Image: The Threshold Report/GPT Image 2
Speech models score well by repeating wrong benchmark transcripts
Hugging Face and Hume AI built tests for speech recognition models that have effectively learned the answer key. Several high-scoring open models reproduced known-wrong benchmark transcripts even when the recording plainly said something else. Leaderboard position can therefore overstate how a system handles an ordinary recording. Buyers and developers are better off running their own task-specific audio through a model before trusting the ranking.
Compute & InfraAug 21

Image: datacenterdynamics.com
Singapore awards 200MW of data-center power to four operators
Digital Realty, Equinix, Keppel Data Centers, and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres each received 50MW on Jurong Island under Singapore's second data-center capacity call. At least half of each project's capacity must run on low-carbon energy, and all four are committed to liquid cooling. Singapore has kept new data-center power tightly rationed, so a defined allocation lets these four plan builds against a known number instead of an open-ended application queue.
Compute & InfraAug 21

Image: datacenterdynamics.com
TVA raises power charges for data centers seeking connections
TVA pulled data centers out of its manufacturing service customer class, a reclassification expected to lift their power charges by about 10%. New developments will also pay capacity-commitment charges of roughly $1.5 million per megawatt, spread over three to five years. Anyone planning a large compute project in TVA territory now has a price attached to the grid capacity they are asking for, and more of the bill for new generation and grid work lands on the developer.
Compute & InfraAug 20
Pennsylvania ties fast data-center permits to bringing new power
Pennsylvania called for rules covering data centers above 25MW that want preferential permitting: secure incremental power capacity, or be curtailed ahead of other customers when the grid is under emergency strain. The same order asks that those data centers carry the relevant emergency-auction and grid-upgrade costs. Households and other businesses would then absorb less of the expansion bill, and the state's approach lines up with the curtailment framework PJM has proposed.
TextAug 20
Google gives publishers a button to become a reader's preferred source
Publishers can embed a Google Preferred Sources button that lets a reader add them to their preferred outlets across Search, Discover, and Google News. Google also says Discover users will soon be able to describe what they want in their feed in ordinary language. Readers get a shorter path to favoring outlets they trust, and publishers get a mechanism that could bring back repeat traffic from Google surfaces where AI now shapes what appears.